VICTORIA — An overflow crowd of New Democratic Party members gathered on the weekend to pick a nominee for a coming byelection to fill Victoria’s vacant seat in federal Parliament.

Four candidates were in the running for a nod seen by New Democrats as the closest thing to a sure ticket to Ottawa. In the last election, NDP standard-bearer Denise Savoie, whose resignation for health reasons created the vacancy, piled up a 16,000-vote margin en route to a third term as MP.

Given the stakes, almost 600 party members including a who’s who of capital region New Democrats turned out Sunday, overwhelming organizers who’d not printed enough ballots or booked a big enough meeting room at the University of Victoria.

Once those shortcomings were supplemented with a second hall and a second printing, proceedings settled down for what was expected to be a long afternoon, with multiple rounds of balloting and a gabfest in between. “You can tell it is an NDP meeting,” said one of the participants. “The halftime entertainment is more speeches.”

So the outcome, when it came, was anticlimactic if decisive. Winning handily with 352 votes on the first ballot was Murray Rankin, a 62-year-old lawyer, civil libertarian, environmentalist and UVic professor.

He’d rounded up two-thirds of the votes over also-rans Elizabeth Cull, a former provincial cabinet minister; Charley Beresford, a former school board chair; and Ben Isitt, still in his first year as a member of city council.

Not surprising to see Beresford (51 votes) and Isitt (36) finish well out of the running. But I figured Cull to do better than her 96 votes. She was one of the better ministers in the Mike Harcourt NDP government, serving in health, environment, finance and as deputy premier.

After losing her seat in 1996, she made a success in the private sector with Dig This, an innovative string of gardening shops catering to green thumbs in the provincial capital region.

But whatever prompted her return to politics, it wasn’t evident from her flat and uninspiring presentation to the assembled party members Sunday afternoon.

Rankin, seeking office for the first time, arrived well-rehearsed with a strong delivery and some crowd-pleasing lines. “We do not want Canada to be the energy Walmart of the world,” he said, denouncing Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s bitumen-piping aspirations. “We have got to stop this man.”

He also showed himself to be relatively proficient in French compared to the other three candidates, an emerging point of qualification in a party where more than half of the caucus hails from Quebec.

He’d worked the riding like a first-timer learning on the job, too, bicycling to the homes of party members, soliciting their support in the ones and twos.

Necessary that, given complaints that the highfalutin lawyer and adjunct UVic professor hadn’t put in sufficient grunt work in a party where seniority and door-knocking still count.

Some doubts were voiced too about Rankin’s reputed wobbling in the last decade, when he’d lent an unofficial hand in the campaign by Bob Rae, the apostate former NDP premier of Ontario, to win the leadership of the federal Liberal party.

But helping to overcome any grumblings about Rankin’s credentials as “one of us” were some heavyweight backers. Party president Moe Sihota. The head of the Victoria labour council. Savoie’s former constituency assistant. Three of the party’s five local members of the legislature (Rob Fleming, Lana Popham and Maurine Karagianis) and the parents of a fourth, Carole James.

They were swayed by Rankin’s lengthy resume, including his service in providing legal and other critical advice to the party. When the NDP was in power in the 1990s, he helped shape NDP initiatives on access to information, treaty negotiations and land use. Most recently he helped provincial leader Adrian Dix formulate his legal position regarding the Northern Gateway pipeline.

Though Rankin hasn’t run for office previously, it was not for lack of overtures. Almost a decade ago, he was asked to seek the provincial leadership in the contest eventually won by Carole James. He passed because of a calculation (correct as it turned out) that the party was facing 10 years in opposition.

In terms of his current prospects, the byelection is expected to be called later this fall. Also nominated to run are two other UVic professors, Paul Summerville for the Liberals and David Galloway for the Greens. The Conservatives are expected to nominate non-academic Patrick Hunt.

Presuming Rankin lives up to his party’s expectations, he’d be on his way to Ottawa before the end of the year. He must be thinking too, that if the federal New Democrats manage to lever their opposition status to the next level, he’d be on the cabinet short list for the country’s first NDP government.

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I wrote yesterday that Chris Olsen had been “fired outright” as press secretary to Premier Christy Clark. He advises that he was offered reassignment to an alternative position or severance and himself chose the latter. “So I wasn’t fired outright.” My mistake.

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